This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
They never feel
They don't even seem real
They never try, so why should I
Something is wrong
Something invisible is gone
They never mind, so why should I
Don't you get hurt
Don't you ever need a cure
Don't you get tired
And why and why
After awhile
After neither one (abides?)
They won't decide, so why should I
When they hand it over
Give it all away
Well how can you explain
When they hand it over
No one gets their way
No one gets their (brain?)
Don't you get tired
Of everyone that you admire
They'll never die, so why should I
Something is wrong
Something invisible is gone
They never mind, so why should I
When they hand it over
Give it all away
Well how can you explain
When they hand it over
No one gets away
No one gets the blame
They don't even seem real
They never try, so why should I
Something is wrong
Something invisible is gone
They never mind, so why should I
Don't you get hurt
Don't you ever need a cure
Don't you get tired
And why and why
After awhile
After neither one (abides?)
They won't decide, so why should I
When they hand it over
Give it all away
Well how can you explain
When they hand it over
No one gets their way
No one gets their (brain?)
Don't you get tired
Of everyone that you admire
They'll never die, so why should I
Something is wrong
Something invisible is gone
They never mind, so why should I
When they hand it over
Give it all away
Well how can you explain
When they hand it over
No one gets away
No one gets the blame
Lyrics submitted by Rockin-Robin
The Host Lyrics as written by
Lyrics © ROUGH TRADE PUBLISHING
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More Featured Meanings
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
Cajun Girl
Little Feat
Little Feat
Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
Head > Heels
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Head > Heels” is a track that aims to capture what it feels like to experience romance that exceeds expectations. Ed Sheeran dedicates his album outro to a lover who has blessed him with a unique experience that he seeks to describe through the song’s nuanced lyrics.
Amazing
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran tells a story of unsuccessfully trying to feel “Amazing.” This track is about the being weighed down by emotional stress despite valiant attempts to find some positivity in the situation. This track was written by Ed Sheeran from the perspective of his friend. From the track, we see this person fall deeper into the negative thoughts and slide further down the path of mental torment with every lyric.
This song seriously moves me. The meaning seems pretty obvious to me (though I could be wrong of course). To me it's clearly about feeling like you've lost the thing that's the most important to you, the thing you've been fighting and competing for all this time. You had a special quality inside yourself that allowed you to do well in your quest for that dream, but now you've lost that special quality, and you're watching other people racing forward and reaching that dream that you wanted so badly. And you're comparing yourself to them - "why are they able to reach that dream goal, but I'm not able to?"
These people who are able to achieve my dream goal, they don't even seem like real human beings, they seem like they're impossibly talented / capable /smart /strong /whatever
They seemed to achieve the dream without even having to work hard for it, so why do I have to nearly kill myself with endless effort just to wind up not achieving my dream at all? It's cruelly unfair.
At some point in the past, I had that special quality in me that allowed me to easily race towards the dream and I easily achieved successes, but now something has changed and I don't have that ability or luck or magic or whatever that made me one of the special people who were able to achieve the dream.
Nothing bothers them (probably because their setbacks are small and infrequent), so why do I have to go through all this emotional hell just to try to get what they achieved so easily? In fact, this whole thing is crazy, why should I be trying to achieve this goal at all? Maybe I should just give up
(I added the question marks to the lyrics transcribed here, because that's clearly the way the lines were meant.) Why does that person seem like their life is nearly perfect and everything always goes well for them? Doesn't anything ever hurt them?! Don't they ever have any problems? Don't they ever fail at anything? Don't they ever get depressed or frustrated? Don't they ever feel like they can't go on? etc.?
These lines aren't really intelligible in the recording, so I can't say exactly what they mean, but it seems to be in a similar vein. They don't have to do (whatever it is) just to survive/succeed, so why do I have to do it just to keep my head above water?
They easily achieved the dream that I wanted so badly and that I worked for so incredibly hard for, yet could never attain. They easily achieved my unattainable dream, and to them it's like it's nothing. (either they treat the dream thing/position like it's junk and just let it fall to pieces, or that they're so good at what they do that they decide to freely share the wealth/knowledge/whatever with people, and even when they share their knowledge/skill/whatever, it's still something that I just can't grasp.
Again, these lines are a bit unintelligible in the recording, so it's hard to say exactly what they mean, but again, it seems to be in a similar vein. They either let the dream slip away / or they freely share their wealth/knowledge/skill whatever, and yet we're all still losers who can't ever achieve that thing that those people achieved so easily.
I looked up to these people that "made it," and I wanted to be like them, but now that I've tried so hard and so long to achieve the same success that they have, but I've failed to achieve it, and now it seems clear that I'll never be able to reach that dream, because I simply don't have what it takes. So now I'm just sick and tired of thinking about these successful people, because now thinking about them only points out how much of a failure I am, and that I'm never going to be able reach that dream that I wanted so intensely and work my life away trying to reach.
(This is taking the idealization of the successful person to the most extreme levels of irrational unreal comparison thoughts) These people's lives are so perfect and they've achieved so much that their contributions to the world will always be remembered forever / or their contributions to the world will continue to ripple forward through humanity forever.
(repeated lyrics, same meaning as above)
I'm incredibly depressed and destroyed by the realization that I'll never attain my dream, but I can't blame my failure on anyone. I can't blame the people who did succeed, I can't blame my parent, I can't blame my grade school teachers, I can't blame my bosses, roommates, bandmates, lovers, or anyone. I probably can't even blame myself, because I tried as damn hard as I possibly could've. Yet I still failed. And somehow that makes it much worse. I can't blame anyone for my failure. The only reason why I failed is because, at my core, I just simply don't have what it takes to make my dream happen. I failed because I am inherently not good enough to do the one thing that I really wanted to do in life.
TL;DR - I suck.